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White Stones: A Paternal History

04-11-2016, 02:03 PM

Father
Because it took me 27 years to inquire
After the names of my grandparents Felix and Anna
This begins almost with you
It ends with another Felix and the feet of chickens

Pap Felix disappeared every day into the hills
Of Conemaugh Pennsylvania to bring out the black coal
From miles inside the earth whose jaws
Crushed the sad insistent life out of Polacks
From the old country

Anna ran the boarding house for 13 other miners
Cooking washing and mending making lunches
Sending the miners out before first light
So that their eyes did not have to adjust to the dark
Either above or in the earth

Anna who at 32 one evening waved good-bye to you
Father being 8 you did not know
She was stepping into the horse-drawn hearse
To lead her like the miners into the ground
She died of consumption having come home
To meet her end from drinking the cold spring water
That came from deep inside the earth

Anna found in death those who perished
In the Johnstown Flood of May 31, 1889 descending
To meet the miners who died from silicosis
Joining the families of miners who disappeared in the night
In the times of John L. Lewis when the strikebreakers came
And people just vanished voices heard awakenings
Like the sound of water under ice not a bad dream
Just horses sent to trample down porches
Coal dust and blood spilled under an unborn moon

Father you became the mother to miners
Brother Felix whom you kidded because he used
Almost a bar of soap a day he believed too much in cleanness
As opposed to coal dust

One day while you were cleaning elsewhere
In that large wooden house Felix had just finished washing
The kitchen floor leaving the door open so that
Sun and air could hasten cleanness and make it stick
Like words caught in a throat

Into the kitchen marched the neighbours’ chickens
Ignorant with a door open they just went in
And dirtied the floor they did not know
About the need for clean floors although I suspect
They breathed some coal dust along the way

Suddenly you hear a terrible racket
And vault down the stairs as children tend to do
When excitement has arrived
You hear the crescendo eerie distressed cackling of chickens
And see white stones tied to the ground by gravity
For Felix not believing in levity but cleanness
Had cut off all their feet and so
The neighbours and boarders ate chicken for a week

Finally in 1921 when Pap had had enough of darkness
Except for the miner’s light he wore on his head
And gas lanterns that lighted passageways
He took the family to Detroit

Felix a couple years later one afternoon
A block away from home hit by a drunk driver
Lying in the street his brains hanging out like the cap
Of an old baseball talks lastly to a stranger
About the chickens and the need for clean floors

He died still tethered to Conemaugh and Pap too
With his silicosis the blackened wings of his lungs
Tired out coal still yawns in worn hills

Father I have walked past white stones
That look like legless chickens dressed up
I do not want to deal with their cackling
Or the nosegay of their feet stuck up in my face
I want those chickens whole again
And talking chicken talk

Hi, Tanner, Quite a story! Beautifully told. Vivid pictures to chew on, along with chicken feet. The sadness of man inflicted death in the ground and above the ground. We will kill you where you lie, and anywhere else we can find you for profit or for fun.

Comment

MHenry, All of this story is true as told to me by my father and verified elsewhere. Before he died, I took a trip with my father back to Johnstown Pennsylvania and saw his birthplace, the house
where he live and the remnants of the mine where my grandfather worked. Thank you for your comments. Much appreciated!